KALYUG

by R. SREERAM

  For the prime minister, as long as he had some output – any output – to justify the ministries, it had been more than enough.

  Now he wondered if it was Powerhouse that was plotting his removal. There were enough issues on which political expediency clashed with financial wisdom, such as the question of allowing foreign funds or investments for Indian operations, weapons deals, and so on. Gyandeep had argued for the profits that could be booked by bringing in foreign investments in dollars; Kuldip, knowing how easily public opinion could be polarized, did not want to rock the boat that was the ruling alliance.

  But that’s not my fault, he thought immediately, almost automatically. It was Mrs Pandit who was supposedly in charge of cultivating the alliance in a direction that her party would be comfortable with, while he projected a technocratic image that should have wooed investors and dollars into the economy. Instead, wanting the cake and eating it too, Mrs Pandit had left him the task of managing both the demands. The resulting stalemate had won him unflattering assessments from the Western media who, he was sure, were being funded by their governments to put more pressure on him.

  So . . . foreign governments. It was possible that some foreign government was behind the situation he found himself in, although he had to concede that it was a rather far-fetched supposition. The US loved him, irrespective of what they allowed their magazines to print; the EU was happy with the Rafale deal and the response to the overtures from Airbus; China really did not care who was the prime minister as long as the export-import imbalance remained; even Pakistan was having too much trouble getting a PM to stay on without getting impeached, to bother about mounting an operation like this on Indian soil.

  Of course, it also made perfect sense for them to spread the political uncertainty across the border . . .

  He sighed. That was the story of his life. Too much thought and too little action, as his sisters used to tease him.

  He had just resigned himself to spending more time waiting for something to happen when the cockpit doors opened and a uniformed Air Force officer stepped in.

  16th September, 2012. New Delhi.

  ‘Oh, good, you’re up,’ said Raghav cheerfully as he undid his seatbelt.

  I jerked my head away from the window, through which I could see the words ‘Indira Gandhi International Airport, New Delhi’, towards him. For a second, I felt dizzy, as if my vision was trying to catch up to where my eyes were pointed. I shut my eyes, forcing myself to take some deep breaths and trying to find out if my eyes were rolling around in their sockets.

  ‘You drugged me,’ I said with as much asperity as I could muster. ‘Bastard.’

  He shrugged apologetically. ‘Sorry, but I didn’t want you asking too many questions until we were back on the ground – and at the time, there was still another hour of the flight to sit through. Besides, I figured you could use the rest – when I picked you up at the airport, you’d looked like a guy who hadn’t slept at all last night.’

  I looked outside again, this time moving my head slowly, avoiding his pointed look. Except for the psychiatrist whom I had been consulting for the past few months, no one else knew of the nightmare that was now my constant night-time companion. Dr Siva, the head-doctor I was seeing, was of the opinion that it was a delayed reaction to the shock of my incarceration. Over the past few months, we had tried hypnosis, REM therapy and pills, none of which had worked permanently. I still woke up in the middle of the night – or a nap – sweating profusely, fighting off imaginary – or remembered – attackers, raging at the idiocy and intolerance that had persecuted me in the guise of national security.

  ‘Come on, Mr Selvam,’ Raghav said, slapping me on the shoulder, ‘let’s get moving. We are slightly earlier than expected, but I don’t want to run the risk of getting held up in traffic.’

  Still sulking, I followed him out of the aircraft. A sleek sedan, one of the middle-aged luxury models from the last decade, waited for us on the tarmac. Raghav and the driver spoke to each other in what seemed to be code-phrases – perhaps to verify each other’s identity – before I was asked to get inside. Less than a couple of minutes after we had landed, we were leaving the airport and speeding towards the heart of New Delhi.

  To be more precise, towards the seat of the Indian government.

  I lowered my window, over Raghav’s protestations, and the air cleared my head. When I felt sufficiently refreshed, I turned to Raghav and protested, once again, being drugged.

  ‘Look, I’m sincerely sorry,’ he said, holding up both palms, ‘but there were things I had to follow up on without being interrupted. Or overheard. I knew you had more questions too, but I thought it would be better if we waited till we had landed. Tell you what – we have enough time till we get there – until then, I’m all yours. Ask me whatever you want.’

  He added as an afterthought, ‘If it’s something you should know, I’ll tell you.’

  ‘You’re crazy!’ I exploded straightaway. ‘You – and this so-called group who’s with you, if they actually exist – are certifiably insane. This whole thing is insane! A coup! Ha! If you think taking over the country is as simple as kidnapping me or chartering a plane . . . or killing an Army General . . . you-you are a bunch of . . .’ I couldn’t bring myself to finish the sentence.

  We travelled in silence for a few, uncomfortable seconds. I was already chiding myself for losing my cool and exposing my true opinion about this so-called conspiracy instead of going along for the ride and seeing what happened, when he spoke, his voice lower than before.

  ‘Do you know how many people you need to take over this country?’

  ‘No. Do you?’

  ‘Two hundred and seventy-seven. That’s one more than the halfway mark in Lok Sabha. Seventy-eight, if you want to include the Speaker too.’

  ‘That’s absurd!’

  ‘It’s not. It’s constitutionally-guaranteed. As long as you have two hundred and seventy-seven members backing you, you can run this country. You can change whatever laws you want. Change the Constitution too, make an officer of the party as unimpeachable as the prime minister or the president. Absolute powers, Mr Selvam, without absolute majority. If that’s too long a process for you, pass an ordinance and you get six months to haggle it through as law.’

  ‘But the power’s not as absolute as you make out,’ I protested. ‘There are no longer any majority governments – it’s all coalitions. Every ally is a safeguard against the kind of runaway governance you are worrying about. Plus, you’ve got an active judiciary, a powerful – if flawed – fourth

  estate . . .’

  ‘All of whom have to work within the limits imposed by their interpretation of the Constitution – and the willingness of the enforcers, such as the police, Vigilance, CBI, Income Tax department and other government agencies to prevent a hijack of the spirit of our laws. But the corruption and politics that you see today has permeated into everything so well that you are scuttled at almost every turn. At the end of the day, the policing bodies report to some minister somewhere – and are therefore at his or her bidding. The judiciary is forced to stick to the letter of the law, as they should be, but they are challenged by the fact that the targets of the laws are the lawmakers themselves!

  ‘Indira Gandhi imposed the Emergency on the strength of a Presidential signature. Her puppet in the Rashtrapati Bhavan. Except for Dr Kalam in between, every appointee since then has been political – either loyal or obscure.

  ‘Today, we bemoan the makers of the Constitution for their short-sightedness, for not anticipating the selfishness of our elected representatives. But the truth was, they believed in the office of the president of India. That whoever held the post would uphold the values of the whole country, act as the check against the elected body’s excesses. They believed that a mature nation did not need more safeguards than the conscience of its government servants, elected or appointed, and an elevated sense of utilitarianism.’

  He paused for breath. ‘And
the media . . . whose objectivity is weighed against TRPs, sponsorships . . . and the hidden agendas of their parent organizations. A generation of newscasters who do not have the sense to shut up, but instead reveal each and every detail of a sensitive operation – as you saw during the 26/11 attacks in Mumbai – in a bid to grab a few more eyeballs and better paying ads.’

  ‘Not everyone is as bad as you make out to be,’ I objected, defending the profession I had once belonged to. ‘There are honest reporters – in fact, most of them are. It’s just difficult for them to be heard if the management’s set in another way.’

  ‘Precisely,’ he said. ‘But what’s the point? When was the last time you read an article in any of the major newspapers or sites without wondering about the political affiliations of the editorial board? When was the last time you saw a channel treat all its guests fairly – at least, in your opinion? When was the last time you accepted news as . . . well, news itself, and not a paid infomercial from one of the affected parties?’

  ‘So what are you offering instead?’ I asked. His sudden and vociferous indignation, even if it resonated, felt offensive, as if he was mocking me for my own lack of empathy. That was a bit rich, I thought, given that it came from an advocate for a coup. ‘Are you going to give us the Utopia that we’ve always wanted? An accountable government, a sensitive – and sensible – media . . . roti, kapda, makaan for the aam aadmi?’

  ‘A change, at least. From where we are now, from a future we are definitely hurtling towards.’

  ‘Why should you be any different from the people you want to chuck out?’ I gestured to the world outside, at random people going about their quiet lives. ‘By your own admission, you are not above blackmail. If you are serious about a coup, you can’t be squeamish about shedding blood, either. You tell me you are going to be honest – well, at least more honest – but that’s what everyone tells me, from the local corporator to Mrs Pandit and Mr Patil when they campaign in my neighbourhood. So why should anyone accept your moral high ground?’

  He studied me intensely before replying with a question of his own. ‘Have you heard of INSAF?’

  16th September, 2012. New Delhi. Rashtrapati Bhavan.

  The two men were ushered into the ante-chamber of the president’s office and asked to await His Excellency’s arrival. The older of the two appeared to be a typical senior bureaucrat – stocky, well-attired, gray-haired and completely at ease within the magnificent building. His companion was taller and had a denser scalp and a leaner frame. The older man, Nelson Katara, walked confidently to the plush sofa in the corner of the room; the younger, Jagannath Mitra, hesitated for a moment, trying to find a nook he could be invisible in. Eventually, he settled into a lone chair that was placed near the entrance they had just walked through.

  When the president walked in a few minutes later, both men stood up respectfully. Gopi Kishan Yadav was a man who prided himself on his ability to size up people at once – and he instantly realized that his conversation would be with the older visitor. With a nod in Mitra’s direction, he shook hands with Nelson Katara and sat down. Katara, in deference to the office of President GK, waited until he had the latter’s permission to sit down.

  ‘What is it?’

  The president, Jagannath thought, was clearly irritated – and just as intrigued – at this last-minute meeting. Irrespective of how senior they were, bureaucrats were often lowest in the totem pole of appointments with the president – coming after foreign heads of state, foreign ministers, Indian leaders (of parties with more than five Lok Sabha members), Indian leaders (of parties with less than or equal to five Lok Sabha members – except just after elections or when a no-confidence motion had been called, at which time they were usually treated on par with the others already mentioned), major industrialists and important family members. For a bureaucrat to not only get an appointment on a Sunday afternoon, not to mention force the rescheduling of a few other meetings, was unheard of – at least since President GK had been sworn in.

  When Katara answered, gone was the deference with which he had stood up. In its place was the polite – but undeniable – firmness that he employed in his negotiations.

  ‘Your Excellency,’ he began, placing a folder on the low table between them, ‘we’ve met only once before, so I doubt you remember me. I’m Nelson Katara and this is my associate, Jagannath Mitra. I am the head of INSAF.’

  ‘Never heard of it,’ said the president, making no move towards the folder. ‘Central or autonomous?’

  ‘Autonomous, I guess,’ replied the other with the beginning of a smile. ‘INSAF stands for Indian Security Agencies’ Federation.’

  The president nodded appreciatively. ‘Appropriate, I guess. “Insaaf” is Urdu for justice. Are you a new organization? I don’t remember hearing the name before.’

  ‘Well . . . actually, we were formed in 2007, shortly after the Mumbai attacks.’

  GK’s surprise was writ large on his face. Over the last ten years, he had held the home ministry, under which INSAF should have been placed, a few times. Despite the constant churn in his portfolios – which he had always privately held to be the work of his long-time colleague who now occupied the prime minister’s chair – he was sure he would have remembered being briefed on the agency’s existence. At least, for having such a clever acronym.

  Katara saw the expression on the president’s face, and continued. ‘Neither the prime minister nor the . . . party chairperson knows about us. In fact, I doubt anyone in the political establishment is aware of us at all.’

  ‘Do you mean to tell me that you have been operating for five years without the government’s approval?’ GK asked incredulously.

  There was no change in the visitor’s demeanour as he answered, ‘We’ve had the government’s approval, yes. But not this government’s.’ As the president’s eyes narrowed, he continued calmly, ‘The home minister at the time had proposed the setting up of a national investigative agency – but all of us working in Intelligence knew it would take a few more years to materialize. We couldn’t afford to wait, though – I am sure you remember how badly the country needed to salvage its pride and exact some revenge. INSAF was the result.

  ‘The government you refer to, Your Excellency, is different from the one I am talking about. Yours is of elected members who keep changing every five years. I refer to the officials who’ve been working in this field for decades, who’ve built up their competencies and their understanding and risked their lives to keep India safe.

  ‘Soon after 26/11, all the Intelligence chiefs – the non-political appointees, that is – met to discuss setting up a single clearinghouse for intel from the various departments. Everyone was there – RAW, BSF, Military Intelligence, IB, CBI . . . all of them sworn to secrecy at any cost, pledged to a charter that allows us to do whatever it takes to protect our country from dangers, internal and external.’

  ‘But – but,’ sputtered the president, ‘that’s preposterous. How can you take a decision like that? You are not allowed to – how dare you? All of you? I’ll have each and every single one of you punished for –’

  ‘For doing something that needed doing,’ interrupted Katara. ‘A necessary evil, if you want to label us. But hear me out and spare us the threats. Do you think we would have exposed ourselves to you without being able to make threats of our own?’

  As the president started to protest, Nelson Katara shut him up with one final question. ‘Do you think we would be here right now without first shutting down Powerhouse?’

  16th September, 2012. New Delhi.

  I listened with rapt attention as Raghav Menon explained the history of INSAF to me. How, in a rare moment of unity, the top Intelligence chiefs in the country had foregone traditional turf wars and instituted an organization that was freed from such meaningless limitations. How, over the past few years, the same organization had grown from strength to strength, absorbing the best and most talented minds from every service to set up a
corps of agents that rivalled the Mossad for cunning, the CIA for funding, the KGB for ruthlessness and the ISI for penetration. I dismissed most of the comparisons as hyperbole but I was still blown away by the possibility of such an organization existing for so long without being exposed.

  It was also evident that Raghav Menon was an employee of INSAF.

  ‘An agent,’ he corrected me when I remarked that he was being the ideal employee, the hyper-enthused evangelist. ‘But yes, I guess I do get carried away when I talk about INSAF. Until today, we were completely forbidden to talk about the federation to anybody outside of it. It’s actually an honour for you – you’re one of the first few civilians allowed to know about it.’

  ‘And I appreciate it,’ I told him. The sarcasm was lost on him. Despite his passionate argument earlier – or perhaps exactly because of the passion in his arguments – I was still leaning towards a ruling of ‘diminished mental capacity’. A new possibility occurred to me – what if Raghav Menon had actually been an agent of the Research and Analysis Wing, or maybe even the Central Bureau of Investigation, but was now an undiagnosed lunatic? That would explain the access to planes and chauffeur-driven cars and the far-fetched scenarios he was trying to impress me with.

  That still left a disturbing question, however. Why me?

  ‘In your book,’ he said, breaking into my chain of thought, ‘you’ve mentioned a loosely-formed cartel of businessmen who finance the coup.’

  ‘What about it?’

  ‘What if the reality is different?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘What if this cartel actually exists? But they are not for a coup, they are against it. Because they’ve already bought a lot of influence across the political spectrum. What if they are the ones remotely running the government and dictating its policies?’